NARAL President Talks About Her Abortion in DNC Speech

It may be the first time a personal story of an abortion has been shared on a convention stage.

Bill Clark/ZUMA

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Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, may have made history at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday afternoon when she talked about her own abortion. Hogue opened her remarks by talking about a time years ago when she learned she was pregnant. “I wanted a family, but it was the wrong time,” she said. “I made the decision that was best for me—to have an abortion, and get compassionate care at a clinic in my own community.”

A spokeswoman from NARAL said she believed this was the first time a woman had talked about her abortion at a presidential convention (at least a nonmedical one). On Twitter, Steph Herold, co-founder of reproductive rights advocacy group the Sea Change Program, said Hogue had “shattered that stigmatized glass ceiling.”

Hogue noted that one in three women will have had an abortion by the age of 45. “You see, it’s not as simple as bad girls get abortions and good girls have families,” Hogue said. “We are the same women at different times in our lives—each making decisions that are best for us.”

Watch Hogue’s full speech below:

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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